May 2023 AI Risk Statement - Primary document

Why this document matters

The May 2023 AI Risk Statement is a short text with outsized institutional weight. It marked a shift from technical alignment discourse into explicit public-risk framing, and it did so in language that policy, media, and executive audiences could repeat without specialist translation.

For sAIfe Hands, this page is a primary source anchor: read the exact wording first, then follow the linked interpretation, signatory, and discussion pages.

Primary statement text

"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

This is the one-line statement released by the Center for AI Safety in May 2023 and signed by a broad set of researchers and public figures.

Primary sources

• Center for AI Safety - Statement on AI Risk
• Center for AI Safety homepage

Why this matters in the sAIfe Hands lens

• The statement normalized extinction-risk language in mainstream institutions.
• It created a common baseline sentence that different camps could debate.
• It accelerated a policy transition from "is this speculative?" to "what controls are proportionate?"
• It exposed a continuing tension between long-horizon catastrophic risk and present-day deployment harms.

Explore further

• AI Risk Statement - Key Ideas
• AI Risk Statement - Signatories
• AI Risk Statement - Why 2023 mattered
• AI Risk Statement - Interpretations and critiques

Related discussions